European Transport / Trasporti Europei (2005) 30/X

This paper looks at the main challenges that are facing the Transport sector in the countries of S. E. Europe after enlargement. First, it looks at the challenge of setting a common Transport policy and points as priority areas the questions of: frontier crossings, road transport quotas, working hours (road transport), restructuring of railways, promotion of Rail Freight “Freeways”, new financing schemes through Public Private Partnerships, and other issues. Then it looks at the factors that will determine the future transport outlook of the area in both qualitative and quantitative terms and it finds that there is a web of factors and issues that will play a role, such as for example the socio-political climate and preferences, the advent of New Technologies, and the degree of development of the Trans-European Networks. The paper looks at the “challenges” facing the inter-urban and urban transport separately. As regards the first it concludes that a) higher integration of the transport provider into the whole transport and logistics chain, and b) closer co-operation and “integration” with the customer, will be the main ones, while for urban transport the main challenge will be improvement of urban traffic management systems and, inevitably, demand management measures, as well as implementation and operation of a whole new series of technologies and systems of urban ICT that will form the Integrated Urban ICT environment of the future.

This paper deals with the phenomenon of Complacency which is one of the causes of human error detected in the domain of ship accidents. The term Complacency is present as an influential social and psychological factor which has similar cause in shipping and port commercial operations. The causes of ship accidents from the aspect of Complacency are defined as Management Complacency, Leadership Complacency and Self-Induced Complacency. All of these causes are reflected as causes of accidents in ports at the management and operational level. The main domain in which Complacency is present as influential element is decision-making process as well as in ship and port commercial operations.

This article aims to analyze the potential of Iranian ports for carrying some containerized cargo, from the Far East to the European Union, which is usually transported via traditional shipping routes. The idea of diverting cargo via an “Iran route” emerged from an examination of economic, trade and maritime transportation trends and events. This study presents a new idea for a freight route, designed in four segments for the benefit of the carrier. In order to make assumptions about the future in what are undisputedly widespread uncertain conditions, a scenario method has been employed. Following this a plausible future plan for a new terminal has been developed taking into account geographical, technical and economic themes for serving the container transit market until 2011.

The paper illustrates the current state of the transport infrastructure in Poland, with special attention to the road, rail and airport infrastructure. It highlights the recent trends in freight and passenger transport and discusses the project for improving and updating the transport networks. Though some improvements are taking place, funds availability remains the main problem for the enhancing of the current poor state of the transport infrastructure.

The paper presents an analysis of the costs of shipping containers from four Chinese ports to representative central European destinations. It is demonstrated that the sum of costs by sea and costs over land, using both truck and rail transport, clearly favours the Italian ports, above all those of Genoa and Trieste for a geographic range that does not include all the Northern countries of the European Union and Russia but does cover a considerable portion of the southernmost cities of these countries such as Milan, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Bern, Lyon, and Kiev. Other Italian ports can compensate for the handicap of the greater distance from this range of production and consumption zones, if they are appropriately reorganized with lower costs in direct competition with the Northern European ports, particularly the port of Naples, where COSCO has set up operation. However, despite the evident advantages in terms of distance and costs, Italian ports are unable to compete with those of Northern Europe on account of inefficiency affecting both their internal structure and inland transport. The purpose of the paper is to define costs in each sector (shipping costs, port costs and inland distribution costs) and to compare the relative port positions.

Four of the nine international transport corridors pass through the territory of Ukraine: №3, №5, №7, and №9. In recent years Ukraine conducted an active policy supporting the European initiatives on the international transport corridors and offered variants of corridors to the European community. In the field of a water transport it is planned to carry out the construction of new and reconstruction of existing infrastructure (regarding corridors № 9; TRACECA; Baltic - Black Sea) in the main Ukrainian ports. The paper considers the situation in the Ukrainian waterways as a part of the international transport corridors. It presents an analysis of the existing situation and some planning measures. In order to optimize and rationally development the inland waterways and seaports of the Black Sea – Azov Sea region it is necessary to speed up the working out and official approval of the regional transport ways network. Regarding Ukrainian seaports this task is carried out within the framework of program TRACECA, and also by Steering Committee of Black Sea PETRA and working group on transport of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation. To connect the new members countries of EU two approaches are considered: (1) the use of the Danube River due to restoration of navigation in its Ukrainian part, providing an exit to the Black Sea; (2) the creation of new inland water-transport links providing a more rational and uniform distribution of freight traffics from the Central and Northern Europe (using the third largest river in Europe - Dnepr River running into the Black Sea). It is important to assess also a condition of development of transport flows in the neighboring states (states of European transport corridors), in particular in the Russian Federation (Big Ring Project and others). There are good prospects of Ukrainian waterways involvement in the system of international transport corridors. Some improvements of the existing structures are needed together with an optimized use of Ukrainian transport potential. There is a large reserve of capacity which represent a base for an optimistic prediction of the future Ukrainian waterways development as part of European transport axis.